1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to the systems and methods for tracking and obtaining feedbacks for electro-magnetically transmissible content (e-TC) delivered in an array of hybrid modes of content deliveries from a sender to the designated recipient. More particularly, this invention is related to methods and network systems that allows a sender to control, monitor and track the delivery of either an article that embodies the Internet-transmissible content or the delivery to different functional apparatus that embodies the content to designated recipients while providing feedback information to the sender.
2. Description of the Related Art
Even through more communications are now carried over the Internet with higher transmission speed and greatly improved efficiency, however, there are still limitations that the Internet communications cannot satisfy. A most obvious limitation is a communication to a person who has limited or even no access to Internet. This group of people may include some elderly individuals or economically disadvantaged people who do not use a computer or devices to have the Internet access at all. As senders of information often initiate a message that is suitable for Internet transmission, e.g., e-mail, the senders are required to apply a different mode of communication, e.g., sending the message as printed copy separately through regular mail services, in order to send the same message to a person who does not communicate over the Internet.
Furthermore, in the field of commercial advertisement, there are still a large amount of printed materials delivered through the regular mail services in the form of direct mail for promoting commercial products or services. However, such distribution of the printed materials for product or service promotion are limited to certain geographic locations, generally within the territory of a nation through the domestic mail services due to cost considerations. International delivery of printed materials would be too costly for mass mail promotions. Notwithstanding the availability of high-speed data transmission across the globe without national boundaries, an effective solution to overcome the geographic limitations of mail deliveries is still not yet available.
Another limitation of the information flow in the printed format such as the printed ads is the difficulty to obtain feedback after the delivery. The marketers usually do not know how many printed ads are accessed or read by the recipients and how many ads actually produced the desired marketing effect. The marketers cannot follow the scope of circulation of the printed ads. In addition, it is inconvenient and inefficient to spread the information of the printed ads as compared to the electronic (digital) ads (e-ads) in the form of e-TC.
E-TC such as e-ads transmitted through the Internet are efficient and convenient to be spread and are used more often. However, the delivery format of e-TC through Internet has the limitation to reach the group of people who have no or limited Internet access. Further limitation of delivering e-TC over the Internet is the lack of information over the recipient's geographic and other status.
In the field of advertising, both printed ads and e-ads have the limitation that there are no processes for monitoring the customer's buying decision, i.e., the conversion rate. Once the printed ads and/or the e-ads are sent, the advertiser has very little information to assess the effectiveness of the advertisements due to the limited amount of information the advertiser can collect about the customer's response to the advertisements delivered either by mail or by Internet.
In a broader sense, when e-TC is received through the Internet or non-Internet routes, and then accessed in the off-line environment, i.e., not directly connected with the Internet, it remains unknown to the advertiser as the e-TC sender how the e-TC is accessed or manipulated in various ways. Therefore, it is difficult to assess how much effort and financial resources are effective or wasted by sending out e-TC as advertisements to large number of receivers with very limited amount of information about receiver's response to these advertisements.
In order to overcome the above-discussed limitations and difficulties, a prior patent application Ser. No. 12/077,105 was submitted by the Applicant of the present invention to disclose systems and methods to deliver tangible deliverable objects that contain e-TC including multimedia contents that may be transmitted over the telecommunication networks (TN) with its various sub-networks interconnected by the connections include but not limited to Internet, the wired and wireless telephone networks, cable systems, satellite communication system, near filed communication system, etc. The sub-networks of TN includes but not limited to Intranet, Wide Area Network (WAN), Metropolitan Area Network (MAN), Campus Area Network (CAN), Local Area Network (LAN), Wireless local area network (WLAN), Personal Area Network (PAN) such as the Bluetooth, WPAN (wireless personal area network), Virtual Private Network (VPN), Client/Server Network, Peer-to-Peer Network, various ways near field communication (NTC), etc., and various future networks of the TN.
However, the delivery of a tangible deliverable object has several limitations. The first limitation is a requirement of the involvement of a delivery agent and/or vehicle to accomplish the delivery of the tangible deliverable. It may be difficult where conditions limit the travel of the delivery agent and/or vehicle to reach the delivery destination. A second limitation is the time required for the process to deliver the tangible deliverable. Delivery may take a relatively extended time in delivering to destinations due to travel difficulties, and/or other situations, even that the delivery process is much faster than the traditional mail system, especially under the circumstances when the delivery must cross over the state and national boundaries. Furthermore, a sender has only limited choices to select the final delivery form, i.e., in the form of a tangible deliverable. Thus, a co-pending provisional application No. 61/284,897 that was filed on Dec. 28, 2009 by the applicant of this application addressed further the systems and methods to more effectively deliver and content in electronic format.
Therefore, a need exists in the art of obtaining feedback for e-TC via hybrid delivery modes to provide improved system configuration to dynamically track the post-delivery status of e-TC such that the above-discussed difficulties and limitations may be resolved.